Bringing Stories to Life by Sharing Archival Material

Last summer I researched the experiences of women at Gettysburg College during the pivotal decade 1965-1975 with the support of a college grant, the Koble Fellowship, a ten-week humanities based faculty-mentored research project. I tracked women\u27s experiences at the college during this period and designed a digital scholarship project to share their stories. As a history major and as a feminist, a project about the history of women and their activism on campus nicely complemented by interests. (excerpt

Turning Points: Women at Gettysburg College from 1965-1975

This poster is a summary of Christina Noto’s summer research. The research focuses on the experiences of Women at Gettysburg College from the Fall of 1964 to the Spring of 1975. While women attended Gettysburg College, they faced discrimination in all aspects of college life-- in the classroom, athletics, activities, their social lives and housing. This poster focuses on the housing discrimination women faced. Women had much stricter housing regulations. For example, women had to sign in and out of their dorms. Women also had mandatory dorm hours (certain times they had to be in their rooms). While some students were frustrated with the College’s policies and some women noticed discrimination; others did not, or were not frustrated by it. As more and more women questioned the way they were treated, particularly with regards to women’s hours, they planned a sleep-in on March 15, 1969 in the Student Union Building (SUB). This event can be viewed as a turning point for women’s rights at Gettysburg College

van der Waals Interaction Energy Between Two Atoms Moving With Uniform Acceleration

We consider the interatomic van der Waals interaction energy between two neutral ground-state atoms moving in the vacuum space with the same uniform acceleration. We assume the acceleration orthogonal to their separation, so that their mutual distance remains constant. Using a model for the van der Waals dispersion interaction based on the interaction between the instantaneous atomic dipole moments, which are induced and correlated by the zero-point field fluctuations, we evaluate the interaction energy between the two accelerating atoms in terms of quantities expressed in the laboratory reference frame. We find that the dependence of the van der Waals interaction between the atoms from the distance is different with respect to the case of atoms at rest, and the relation of our results with the Unruh effect is discussed. We show that in the near zone a new term proportional to $R^{-5}$ adds to the usual $R^{-6}$ behavior, and in the far zone a term proportional to $R^{-6}$ adds to the usual $R^{-7}$ behavior, making the interaction of a longer range. We also find that the interaction energy is time-dependent, and the physical meaning of this result is discussed. In particular, we find acceleration-dependent corrections to the $R^{-7}$ (far zone) and $R^{-6}$ (near zone) proportional to $a^2t^2/c^2$; this suggests that significant changes to the van der Waals interaction between the atoms could be obtained if sufficiently long times are taken, without necessity of the extremely high accelerations required by other known manifestations of the Unruh effect.Comment: 9 page

Interactions among salt marsh plants vary geographically but not latitudinally along the California coast.

The strength of species interactions often varies geographically and locally with environmental conditions. Competitive interactions are predicted to be stronger in benign environments while facilitation is expected to be stronger in harsh ones. We tested these ideas with an aboveground neighbor removal experiment at six salt marshes along the California coast. We determined the effect of removals of either the dominant species, Salicornia pacifica, or the subordinate species on plant cover, aboveground biomass and community composition, as well as soil salinity and moisture. We found that S. pacifica consistently competed with the subordinate species and that the strength of competition varied among sites. In contrast with other studies showing that dominant species facilitate subordinates by moderating physical stress, here the subordinate species facilitated S. pacifica shortly after removal treatments were imposed, but the effect disappeared over time. Contrary to expectations based on patterns observed in east coast salt marshes, we did not see patterns in species interactions in relation to latitude, climate, or soil edaphic characteristics. Our results suggest that variation in interactions among salt marsh plants may be influenced by local-scale site differences such as nutrients more than broad latitudinal gradients

Thermal and non-thermal signatures of the Unruh effect in Casimir-Polder forces

We show that Casimir-Polder forces between two relativistic uniformly accelerated atoms exhibit a transition from the short distance thermal-like behavior predicted by the Unruh effect, to a long distance non-thermal behavior, associated with the breakdown of a local inertial description of the system. This phenomenology extends the Unruh thermal response detected by a single accelerated observer to an accelerated spatially extended system of two particles, and we identify the characteristic length scale for this crossover with the inverse of the proper acceleration of the two atoms. Our results are derived separating at fourth order in perturbation theory the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction field to the Casimir-Polder interaction between two atoms moving in two generic stationary trajectories separated by a constant distance, and linearly coupled to a scalar field. The field can be assumed in its vacuum state or at finite temperature, resulting in a general method for the computation of Casimir-Polder forces in stationary regimes.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Revised versio

Comparative assessment of strut models for the modelling of in-plane seismic response of infill walls

The influence of infills on the seismic response of frame structures has long been recognised. Typically, stiffness and strength of the infill and connections between infill and frame are such that the infill affects the global seismic behaviour of the structure. Hence, the presence of infills should be considered in the analysis and design of new buildings and in the seismic assessment of existing ones. To this aim, simple models for infill walls, such as the equivalent diagonal no-tension strut model, have been developed in the last decades. The objective of the present study is to assess the validity of different strut models. To this aim, 162 experimental tests available in the literature are considered. The data set includes both reinforced concrete and steel frames, as well as confined masonry structures. The mechanical characteristics of masonry and the boundary conditions between frames and infills of the test specimens take into account a large set of situations, reflecting the great variability in the materials and in the construction techniques adopted in different countries. Moreover, the type of tests and the related results are not uniform; in some cases monotonic experiments are performed, whereas in other cases cyclic tests are carried out. As expected, the presence of different types of infill-frame systems results in a large scatter of the data. However, the comparison between experimental results and predictions show that, on the average, the infill strength can be adequately estimated by resorting to the strut model whereas major uncertainties are found for the stiffness prediction

Radiative heat transfer between metallic gratings using adaptive spatial resolution

We calculate the radiative heat transfer between two identical metallic one-dimensional lamellar gratings. To this aim we present and exploit a modification to the widely-used Fourier modal method, known as adaptive spatial resolution, based on a stretch of the coordinate associated to the periodicity of the grating. We first show that this technique dramatically improves the rate of convergence when calculating the heat flux, allowing to explore smaller separations. We then present a study of heat flux as a function of the grating height, highlighting a remarkable amplification of the exchanged energy, ascribed to the appearance of spoof-plasmon modes, whose behavior is also spectrally investigated. Differently from previous works, our method allows us to explore a range of grating heights extending over several orders of magnitude. By comparing our results to recent studies we find a consistent quantitative disagreement with some previously obtained results going up to 50\%. In some cases, this disagreement is explained in terms of an incorrect connection between the reflection operators of the two gratings.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. Some typos corrected with respect to the previous versio

Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium between dielectric gratings

We calculate the Casimir-Lifshitz pressure in a system consisting of two different 1D dielectric lamellar gratings having two different temperatures and immersed in an environment having a third temperature. The calculation of the pressure is based on the knowledge of the scattering operators, deduced using the Fourier Modal Method. The behavior of the pressure is characterized in detail as a function of the three temperatures of the system as well as the geometrical parameters of the two gratings. We show that the interplay between non-equilibrium effects and geometrical periodicity offers a rich scenario for the manipulation of the force. In particular, we find regimes where the force can be strongly reduced for large ranges of temperatures. Moreover, a repulsive pressure can be obtained, whose features can be tuned by controlling the degrees of freedom of the system. Remarkably, the transition distance between attraction and repulsion can be decreased with respect to the case of two slabs, implying an experimental interest for the observation of repulsion.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted on Phys. Rev.

Evaluating several satellite precipitation estimates and global ground-based dataset on Sicily (Italy)

The developing of satellite-based precipitation retrieval systems, presents great potentialities for several applications ranging from weather and meteorological applications to hydrological modelling. Evaluating performances for these estimates is essential in order to understand their real capabilities and suitability related to each application. In this study an evaluation analysis of satellite precipitation retrieval systems has been carried out for the area of Sicily (Italy). Sicily is an island in the Mediterranean sea with a particular climatology and morphology, which is considered as an interesting test site for satellite precipitation products on the European mid-latitude area. A high density rain-gauges network has been used to evaluate selected satellite precipitation products. Sicily has an area of 26,000 km2 and the gauge density of the network considered in this study is about 250 km2/gauge. Four satellite products (CMORPH, PERSIANN, TMPA-RT, PERSIANN-CCS) along with two adjusted products (TMPA and PERSIANN Adjusted) have been selected for the evaluation. Evaluation and comparisons among selected products is performed with reference to the data provided by the gauge network of Sicily and using statistical and visualization tools. Results show that bias is relevant for all satellite products and climatic considerations are reported to address this issue. Moreover bias errors are observed for the adjusted products even though they are reduced respect to only-satellite products. In order to analyze this result, the ground-based precipitation dataset used by adjusted products (GPCC dataset), has been examined and weaknesses arising from spatial sampling of precipitation process have been identified for the study area. Therefore possible issues deriving from using global ground-based datasets for local scales are pointed out from this application. © 2012 SPIE